


Kind Of A Nightmare

by ArtemiStorm



Series: Della Duck's Expanded Story [2]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen, How the heck does OxyChew work?, Moon, My First Work in This Fandom, Not Moon, Nothing can stop Della Duck!, Self-Doubt, Vomiting, Where's my leg?, can I be a part of this family?, can't sleep, gravity is stupid, introspective, is this a dream?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24349450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemiStorm/pseuds/ArtemiStorm
Summary: Della hoped that somehow against the odds, no one heard her and woke up. She really really really did not want any of the kids or even Uncle Scrooge to find her like this in a moment of weakness, in pain, feeling sick, awake and alone in the night, drowning in self-doubt and fears. In all her time on the moon, it never occurred to her how hard it was actually going to be to be back home. Even though it was a dream come true to finally be home, it was also kind of a nightmare.
Series: Della Duck's Expanded Story [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813666
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Kind Of A Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> The theme songs for this story (read: the songs I listened to on repeat as I wrote this) are four songs from the Interstellar soundtrack by Hans Zimmer: Tick-Tock (suite), Stay (suite), Day One Dark (suite), and Organ Variation (suite).
> 
> I do not own Della Duck, Betina Beakley or any other DuckTales peoples, places or thingses. They belong to Disney.
> 
> Wait... does that make Della a Disney Princess?

She’d done it thousands of times over the last ten years—repeatedly every single night—woken up with that suffocating feeling, that heaviness on her chest, the twinge of panic that sent electricity through her whole body...

Della Duck’s eyes suddenly opened and she inhaled deeply. The air was thin, stifling, and unusually warm. She rolled to her side and curled up to make breathing easier. She gasped a few times then instinctively, began chewing. That’s all she had to do. Chew. And then she could go back to sleep. Della began to relax again.

OxyChew.

That miraculous (yet disgusting) candy was the only thing (other than sheer will power) that had kept Della alive for the last ten years. It was, in her opinion, Gyro Gearloose’s best invention ever (and probably his only good invention) (for obvious reasons).

OxyChew.

Comes in one (nasty) flavor: black licorice. Provides oxygen, water and nutrients when it is chewed (each individual stick of OxyChew can last for up to a year!). OxyChew is comprised of a trade-secret conglomeration of gum and precise proportions of various microbes that consume and metabolize saliva producing byproducts essential to life, such as oxygen, water, calorie-rich oils, salt, sugar, carbs, and minerals. The act of chewing agitates, activates, and excites the microbes to action, which means, it works, as long as the consumer is actively chewing it…

…which is problematic when the consumer needs to sleep.

When she got back to Earth, Della planned to talk to Gyro (and possibly punch him in the face) about this rather huge drawback in his product. Anytime she was just drifting off to sleep and stopped chewing, the OxyChew’s oxygen supply would peter out and she’d wake up with that suffocating feeling. She would start chewing again and go back to a light sleep only to awaken several minutes later. Over and over this cycle would repeat, virtually ensuring her chances of ever sleeping well again were pretty close to nil.

It drove her crazy the first few days on the moon. She couldn’t get a full night’s sleep, felt tired all the time, and had a hard time thinking. She tried to come up with workarounds, but nothing worked. Finally, after a week, she resigned herself to the fact that this was her new reality. The cost of her continued survival on the moon was the sacrifice of sleep.

Della never slept deeply. She never felt rested. The lack of REM sleep made it hard to think during the day. After several months, when she gave up hope of rescue and decided to rebuild the rocket herself, she found it ridiculously hard to study the rocket manual and remember what she learned day to day. It took a lot of hard work. She had to go from being a simple bush pilot adventurer to being a mechanic, aerospace engineer, and rocket scientist. And she—the sleep-deprived ADHD thrill-seeker—had to do it by teaching herself, from a book—an impossible task!

But there was simply nothing for it. It had to be done. She’d just have to push through the challenges and struggle toward her goal. And whenever she thought she couldn’t take another step, when she couldn’t wrench down a single bolt more, when she just wanted to give up, spit out the gum and let the darkness take her, she’d look at the picture of her family. Of her uncle, brother, her three unhatched eggs, of the drawing she made of what she thought her boys might look like, and once again her heart would fill with love and hope and determination. She’d look up at the sky to her home on Earth, chew the gum a little harder, and stand up once again. Anything is an impossible task, until at some point, you decide it isn’t.

The OxyChew kept her alive day to day but the design flaw caused her herculean difficulty in saving herself. But she wasn’t about to let that stop her from going home to her kids. Nothing, on the Earth above, the moon below, or the stars all around could stop Della Duck!

Della was just drifting off to sleep once again when she awoke again. Despite the fact that she was chewing, she realized that the suffocating feeling wasn’t going away. It was getting worse. And then she realized, there wasn’t actually any OxyChew in her mouth! Had it fallen out? She felt around her face but didn’t find the gum. Had she swallowed it? That would not be good. She’d only chewed that piece for four months; it still had eight months left of use! She knew the pack only had one OxyChew left and though she really didn’t want to break it out yet, it looked like she was going to have to.

Della tried to reach out to where she kept the OxyChew pack near her head, but something blocked her hand from moving forward. What? There shouldn’t be anything between her head and the OxyChew pack! She kept the pack always within arms-length easy reach, especially when she slept!

Her eyes snapped open, but she couldn’t see anything but darkness. Where were the stars? Where was the near-constant glow of the sunlight on the moon’s pale dust? Why was it so dark? The next new moon wasn’t for two weeks! Something was very, very wrong.

Della tried to move, to reach out, to sit up, but something pressed down heavily, even painfully on her and restricted her movement. She gasped for breath, feeling the edge of panic grow as her heart leapt into her throat. Was she caught under debris? Had she launched and crashed a rocket? She couldn’t remember! Not enough air to think! She frantically clawed at whatever held her captive. It felt like fabric! Was it her old space suit that she cut apart and turned into a blanket? Impossible! It wasn’t this large or heavy and by now it was so raggedy it couldn’t have even held down a baby!

But what if a meteor had crashed and buried her under a tidal wave of dust while she was sleeping? That might explain why Della felt so hot! Too hot! Not enough air! No OxyChew! Trapped in the dark!

Della thrashed her arms and leg out in a desperate attempt to break free. She rolled to one side, but as she did, the ground beneath her seemed to give way, like it wasn’t solid. Before she could react, she rolled over the edge and fell.

KA-THUD!

Della hit the ground hard. The jarring blasted a wave of pain through her whole body and she couldn’t move for a few seconds. It was still dark. She was still trapped, bound in the heavy fabric, but a rush of slightly cooler air rushed toward her face. She gulped the air, grateful but puzzled. How could this be? On the moon there was no air! And she did not have OxyChew!

And the fall made no sense either. Even though she had fallen for less than a second, she hit the ground as hard as if she’d fallen from some mountainous height. In the moon’s tenuous gravity, it should have taken ten seconds or more to fall such a distance, not a fraction of a second!

Slowly, Della stretched out her leg and arms. The heavy blanket-like thing that had held her down gave way and cooler air bathed her skin. She could see the pale white light of the moon or the stars filtering through slats onto the far wall. She wasn’t outside on the surface of the moon where she normally slept. It appeared that she was inside a room and had fallen off of a bed. A regular person bed.

_How was that possible?_

Della kicked the last of the blanket off of her body and lay flat on her back staring at the ceiling. Gingerly, she braced herself and pushed up to a sitting position. She recognized the room and it took a few more seconds to remember where she was.

Her bedroom.

_Her bedroom?!_

She was in her bedroom at McDuck Manor! On Earth. Not on the moon.

She was home!

Now she remembered everything clearly: she’d found friends and resources amongst the Lunarians, enlisted their help in rebuilding her rocket, blasted off the moon, flown back to Earth, crash-landed in the woods outside of town, walked to McDuck Manor, climbed the gate and the hill to the front steps of home…

And finally met her three sons for the very first time.

The next several hours were a whirlwind of sweet and precious moments. She learned their names, when they were born, and started to get to know who they were. Together they’d had dinner, she’d made them cake, told them a story, put them to bed… She’d been drunk with joy. It was all so impossibly, unbelievable real! Della scarcely believed that it had actually happened. After all these years, after so much struggle to survive and rescue herself, was she really actually home?

Della rubbed her face with her hands. The extra weight and achiness in her whole body felt real enough. It could be from the stronger gravity, she reasoned. And probably also from the impact of crashing the rocket back on Earth. But most of all, her stomach burned like it was on fire. Maybe it was some internal injury…? Or maybe it was just something she ate.

Della knew that there was no going back to sleep, now. Her stomach hurt. The room was too hot. And her bed and blankets made her feel like she was smothering in moon dust. She wasn’t used to this... luxury.

Della had taken the Spear of Selene on a test flight before it was ready. The avionics weren’t fully installed and programmed, ready to handle to complexities of space travel. Della wasn’t trained on how to handle the many dangers of space. And when she crash-landed on the moon after that cosmic storm, she found that the rocket hadn’t been stocked with much of anything yet.

Della certainly paid for her impatience and foolishness.

For ten years she slept on the cold dusty lunar ground underneath one of the broken wings using her ragged space-suit as a meager blanket and the cushion off her broken pilot-seat as a pillow. And she was cold. Always cold. But she got used to the harsh lunar life. Maybe Uncle Scrooge would let her sleep in one of the cooler downstairs bedrooms, or even camp outside in the backyard under the stars and the moon… just until she got used to being a civilized person again.

Della put one arm on the bed and the other on the night stand and struggled to stand, but gravity proved to be too much. She fell backward against the nightstand with a thump and a flash of pain in her back that made her wince. Standing up was one mission she’d need both feet for. Della reached for her prosthetic leg, installed it, and tried again. This time she succeeded in standing up… but almost puked.

“Oh man!” She gulped and covered her mouth resisting her body’s attempts to heave. The urge to throw up passed after a few seconds, but the burning feeling remained. She took a few steps to the window and strained to unlock and open it. He muscles had obviously atrophied in the thin gravity of the moon, and it would probably take a while to regain her strength. Cool wind rushed in the stuffy bedroom and she leaned close to the screen, letting the fresh air wash over her face and arms. It smelled strongly of plants and dirt and exhaust from cars in the city and salt water from the ocean and the wetness of the dew of the pavement and everything just seemed so amazing and beautiful. On the moon there was no air except for her own breath. Nothing to smell except licorice and dust.

Everything she’d witnessed on Earth since she arrived was spectacular. The abundance of air, the millions of smells, the brilliance of the light of the sun and the colors, the variation in flavor and texture of food… was everything on Earth always this extraordinarily rich in detail? She didn’t remember her homeworld being this fantastic. And although Della loved every second of it, drank it in, marveling at everything, it was at times, overwhelming. The quiet and darkness of the night were comforting.

Della burped and the sound of it seemed to rip through the quiet like a peal of thunder. She bent over cradling her churning stomach with her arms.

“I shouldn’t have done that yesterday,” she murmured. She could hear in her head as Mrs. Beakley and Uncle Scrooge the night before had implored her to take it easy.

“Slow down, lass, there’s no need to eat ten years’ worth of food in one sitting!”

“How long has it been since you last had a square meal, Della dear? You ought to take it easy.”

And of course, she had ignored them. It was the best day of her life! Why not celebrate? And that food was the best she had ever tasted. At least it was going down. To be honest, it actually still might taste better coming back up that that revolting black licorice OxyChew. She’d be happy if she never laid eyes on that disgusting gum again. She gagged at the thought of OxyChew.

‘Better take a walk,’ Della thought. ‘Maybe it’ll calm my stomach.’

Della peeked out her door. Moonlight shone from the high stairwell windows and bathed the corridor in a steady pale glow. Awash in ethereal silver light, the ghostly shapes of doorways, paintings, relics, and end tables haunted the edges of the hallway. It seemed like some kind of dreamscape. Familiar, yet not quite right.

Despite how real everything seemed yesterday, and the pain she now endured, in this dark and quiet hallway she couldn’t help but wonder if this was indeed a dream. The idea of her being back… it was too good to be true.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Della, this is probably all just a dream. It isn’t real. I’m going to wake up on the moon again sooner or later.’

Yes, she was probably still on the moon, maybe delirious (Della-rious) with fever from some exotic disease contracted from the Lunarians. Maybe she crashed a rocket or failed an engine test and accidentally blew it up or survived a meteor impact or something and had a concussion. Maybe she never actually left Earth and the moon was a dream. Maybe she was in a coma after falling off a mountain or getting zapped by magical rays or some other adventuring accident. Now that would be a stellar plot twist.

Even if this was all a dream, how could she be dreaming of McDuck Manor? It had been seven or eight years since the last time she dreamed about it. There was a point early on in her time on the moon when she switched from dreaming about home to dreaming about the moon: the struggle to survive, the challenge of studying rocket science, the fights with the mite… just the sheer amount of time she spent there had dulled her memory of home. How could she possibly be dreaming this place up with such incredible detail?

Della ran her hand along the mahogany trim as she slowly walked down the hall, her metal leg thudding gently on the rug. She shivered remembering how big, long and cool the hallway seemed when she was a child. She would creep, just as she was doing now, alone in the dark, slightly scared but mostly exhilarated, to the bathroom or the kitchen or even to the balcony to look at the stars and the moon in the sky and dream. The hallway didn’t seem so long now, but maybe still a little bit creepy, because she knew what sorts of things Uncle Scrooge kept locked up in closets and crannies and bins.

In the dim light, she could make out one of the paintings on the walls. It was familiar. She reached out and gently touched the familiar paint strokes. It was a landscape painting of Uncle Scrooge’s beloved Scotland. She remembered it from when she was a little girl. She used to pause and analyze it, pretending that she was an ancient Scottish painted warrior defending the green cliffs and stony fields from Roman invaders. And then she’d run off chasing Donald with a wooden sword (or a real one once she got older). Della smiled. Those were the good times. But those times were passed. Although she was no longer the same carefree youth from long ago, the painting was still the same. It was even still in the exact same place it had been for as long as she could remember.

Next to it on the wall hung several tribal masks. She was still hazy on the details, but she remembered that they were the masks she, Donald, and Uncle Scrooge were awarded after saving an Eskimo tribe from the dreaded Snow-Devil. It actually turned out to be a malfunctioning movie prop, a robotic Yeti leftover from some long-forgotten blockbuster filmed in the region. That adventure happened a lifetime ago, or so it seemed. It had been years since Della had thought about it. It was weird, she was dusting off the cobwebs in her mind. Her memories were like fossils from her long-buried past that she was digging up. Della was once again an adventuring treasure-hunter, but this time, her past was the treasure.

Della moved on down the hall. Near the stairs, she saw something she didn’t recognize. Recessed into the wall was a small shrine to an unknown adventure. Two crossed spears hung above a little shelf. On the shelf stood a strange statuette and below it on the floor was a large pot, like one might put umbrellas or canes or mummified remains in. Where did these things come from? What story did they tell? Who went on the adventure? Was it Uncle Scrooge and Donald? Had the boys gone on the adventure too? Did Agent 22 and her granddaughter accompany them?

It was clear, much time had passed since she last treaded these halls. Some things in the hallway were the same. But there were new things too. She’d noticed that the day before. Big things and little things, here and there throughout the mansion were new and different. The most obvious of which was her kids.

The last thing in the hallway before the stairs was a family portrait. The boys looked to be a year or two younger than they were now. Uncle Scrooge with his cane and formal coat stood in the center. To his left were cousins Feathry and Gladstone. To his right was Donald (cross-eyed staring at a spider sitting on his bill—haha, he sure always had the worst luck). In front of them were the three boys, all perched on stools, Louie and Dewey looking angelic while Huey looked slightly maniacal. (Was he secretly the bad brother? In the few hours that she had known them, Della had pegged Louie as the possibly evil one.)

Della was beyond thrilled to finally meet her boys. They were her reason to live. The hope and burning desire to return home and be their mom was the only thing that had kept her alive. She was delighted to find how well-adjusted they were. Della was impressed; Donald and Uncle Scrooge had done a good job with them. The kids were healthy, happy, and well-looked-after.

Uncle Scrooge was just as fit as a fiddle as he was before she left. Agent 22 was still the same old tough-as-nails guardian angel (although with a little more grey hair). Then there was her granddaughter, that little girl named Webby, just as well off as the boys and just as fierce as her granny. And while Della hadn’t yet been reunited with Donald, from what the others reported, he too was doing just fine. At dinner, the boys and Webby had gone on and on about all the grand adventures they had been on with Donald, Uncle Scrooge and Agent 22, or Mrs. Beakley as they called her. And everything was right with the world.

But it stung a little bit.

Ten years ago, Della made a mistake and got lost. Although no one had really said, she figured they probably searched for a while, then gave up, thinking that she had died. Uncle Scrooge and Donald likely had a period of mourning and adjustment to life without her. Uncle Scrooge almost certainly blamed himself for her untimely demise and fell into depression for a while. Donald would have held out hope for her return, but at some point, he would have had to accept that she was never coming home and come to terms with his new role as single parent to her orphaned kids.

No matter how or how long, they all eventually moved on. They all kept going on with their lives. The kids learned to crawl and walk and run and started school and progressed through the grades. Donald started a career in sailing, maybe got promoted now and then, and at some point, ended up owning his own boat. Uncle Scrooge carried on drinking tea and golfing, treasure-hunting, and running his business. Everyone in the family had moved on and made ten years of progress in their lives.

Della, on the other hand, didn’t.

A decade ago, in a single moment, she made an impulsive decision that resulted in her crash and stranding on the moon. That one foolish decision destroyed her life. And she spent TEN YEARS facing unimaginable hardships working, struggling, and striving to do the impossible and undo what she had done. Everyone else had moved on and left her behind in the dust. She had been abandoned on the moon.

For ten years, she only had one thought, one goal, one hope and dream: to get home and be a mom to her boys. But now that she was here, she was faced with painful questions she was afraid to ask and even more afraid of the answer:

Did they really need her? Did they even want her?

Everyone seemed to be getting along just fine without her. Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and Agent 22 were doing a perfectly good job raising Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Should she even come back into their lives? What if she kept trying too hard and screwed everything up even more than she already had? What if she took all that time and effort to come home and she failed at the one thing she came home to do?

The burning in Della’s stomach shifted upward. She leaned against the wall gagging and covering her mouth. It looked like she was going to find out real soon if dinner tasted just as good coming up as it did going down. She had to think fast. She didn’t want to throw up in the upstairs bathroom and wake everybody with gross barfing noises. No, she needed to get to the nearest downstairs bathroom quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Della leaned heavily on the bannister as sped down the stairs.

‘It’ll be faster if I skip steps!’ She thought and took a leap. Expecting to gracefully arc down three or four or all of the steps like she would have in lunar gravity, she was caught off guard when the steps came up to meet her very much faster than she expected. Della stumbled onto one knee, put her hands down to catch herself but tumbled head over heels down the rest of the stairs.

‘Ohhhhhh!’ She groaned from the bottom landing. Everything hurt now more than ever. If she hadn’t been dangerously close to throwing up, she might have just stayed there laying on the landing until morning. But the dizzying tumble down the stairs definitely didn’t help her sour stomach. Della burped loudly.

“Ooh, I tasted that one! Not good!”

Della rolled to her knees, then tried to stand but fell. She looked down. Her prosthetic leg was missing. Up the stairs, her leg lay hanging off a step twelve steps up. She burped again. There was no time to lose, no time to waste. She got on her one good leg and hopped, one, two, three jumps down the hall, the burn in her belly rising ever higher with every jarring landing. On the fourth hop her leg wavered, already exhausted by the effort. She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled determinedly to the bathroom.

Della flipped up the lid of the toilet and immediately started vomiting. Everything she had eaten since she had come home came back up. She heaved until there was nothing left to throw up and then just sat there, breathing raggedly and drooling into the pot.

She hoped that somehow against the odds, no one heard her tumble. She really really really did not want any of the kids or even Uncle Scrooge to find her like this in a moment of weakness, in pain, feeling sick, awake and alone in the night, drowning in self-doubt and fears. In all her time on the moon, it never occurred to her how hard it was actually going to be to be back home. Even though it was a dream come true to finally be home, it was also kind of a nightmare.

“Della,” someone said softly. Della looked up sideways as she wiped the spittle off her mouth. It was Agent—Mrs. Beakley.

“I know, I know,” Della said. “No need to say it.”

“Say what, dear?” Agent—Mrs. Beakley asked blinking innocently.

“’I told you so.’”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I know you’re thinking it.”

“I brought you something to help.” Mrs. Beakley held out a tray with a glass seltzer water and a towel. Della eyed her and the tray suspiciously for a moment before accepting.

“I also have your, um, leg,” Mrs. Beakley held it out awkwardly by the toe, like she wasn’t exactly sure where to grip it.

“Thanks,” Della said taking and reattaching it. “I take it you heard me fall down the stairs?”

“Duckworth alerted me to your situation, but I was, indeed, already aware.”

“Sooooo that’s a yes, then. Did anyone else…?”

“I do not believe so.”

“Good.” Della was visibly relieved. With great effort, Della moved to sit on the edge of the tub. She tried to mask the pain and not make a face but she doubted Mrs. Beakley with her spy training was deceived.

“I’m surprised you made it as long as you did.”

“What?”

“You haven’t eaten in TEN YEARS. I’m surprised you kept your dinner down as long as you did.”

“Hehe, you must not know me very well. I’m Della Duck and I am—” Della leaned over the toilet once again and heaved once more.

“Still throwing up,” Mrs. Beakly said dryly. She gathered Della’s hair and clipped it back with a pink unicorn clip, presumably one of Webby’s. Della coughed and spat to clear her throat. Mrs. Beakley held out the towel.

“Please don’t tell uncle Scrooge,” Della asked wiping her face. “He’s been through enough. I don’t want to worry him more.”

“Only if you’ll promise me that you’ll slow down.”

“Slow down? Agent—I mean Mrs. Beakley—can I just call you Beakley?—I don’t know that I can slow down. There’s just so much to do! So much lost time to make up for!” She said enthusiastically, then added in a smaller voice, “there’s so much I need to make up for.”

“Della, you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do! This is all my fault! I screwed up and you all paid for it. I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to…” Della couldn’t finish her sentence. Mrs. Beakley put her hand on Della’s shoulder. Della looked away, feeling her face heat up.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Mrs. Beakley comforted. “What’s done is done. Let the past be in the past. All that matters is that you are here now.”

“No! I missed so much of their lives! Their first steps, their first words, their first day of school…”

“You can’t make up for everything you missed,” Mrs. Beakley said sharper than she intended. “There’s no point in trying.”

“What? Beakley, I—” Della began, hurt and confused.

“What I mean to say” Mrs. Beakley took a softer tone, “is don’t try to make up for everything you missed. Don’t put that pressure on yourself, it will only lead to frustration. Just start from where you are right now, from where the boys are, and go on from there.”

“While I was on the moon, I made all these great plans for how I was going to be Best Mom Ever, now that I’m here, I’m so excited, I want nothing more than to be their mom, but honestly, I… have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll take it one step at a time. We will all be here to help you.”

Della wasn’t sure. What if she failed? What if Uncle Scrooge didn’t approve of her? What would Donald think about her returning and taking over for him as the boys’ parent? What if the boys didn’t like her? And of course she still had to readjust to life on Earth—gravity, food, sleeping in a room on a bed like a normal person… There was just still so much going against her! She might not still be on the moon but she was still going to have to fight tooth and nail to fulfill her duty and her dream of being part of this family once again.

“Well are you going to say it or am I?” Mrs. Beakley interrupted her thoughts.

“What?”

“You know what I’m referring to, your famous catchphrase? Nothing can—”

“—can stop Della Duck!” Della finished. She grinned. “You’re right Beakley. Even though this is the hardest thing I have ever done, I’ll keep on trying, keep on fighting, and I will make it, because nothing can stop Della Duck!”

“Shh! I know you’re excited, but please keep your voice down dear, everyone else is still sleeping.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. Haha, I’m just so pumped.” Della laughed. She raised her hands and looked at them feeling the gravity, embracing the pain in her sore muscles, because the pain meant that she had survived and the gravity meant that she was back on Earth. She looked around the room, the normal, domestic, first-floor Scottish mansion bathroom.

“Beakley, I—I still can’t believe it. This is all just so… Is this all really real?” Della asked. “Am I really actually home?”

“Yes, Della dear,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “This is all completely, 100% really real. You are finally home!”

Della stood up and pumped her fist in the air, tears streaming down her face.

“Yeah! Mommy’s finally home!”


End file.
